“If you don’t give your mind and body a break, you’ll break. Stop pushing yourself through pain and exhaustion and take care of your needs.” ~Lori Deschene 

When I collapsed that evening while fishing, I was fortunate not to land head-first into the water.

It was April 2018, a few weeks before my fiftieth birthday, and after work, I decided to walk to the local pond and spend the remaining hours of light fishing.

After a short time, though, I started to feel hot, a little lightheaded, and dizzy, and then the lights went out. I only blacked out for a second, but it was long enough to fall to the ground, and it scared the living you-know-what out of me.

The next several months involved working with doctors who ran a number of tests to see what might have caused the event. With no one issue found that would explain the collapse, my primary doctor started asking about my lifestyle habits.

She asked me to describe a typical week.

I told her I got up early Monday through Friday, got to work by 8 a.m., and got home around 7 p.m. Except on nights when I went to visit my mom at the nursing home; then I got home around 9 p.m. unless she was in the hospital again, and then it was later. I’m her healthcare power of attorney, so when she goes to the hospital, I’m always there, too.

On Saturdays, I’d wake up early, do the weekly chores, and run as many errands as possible by dinner time. Then, I’d eat, watch a few hours of TV, and go to bed.

On Sundays, I’d get up early to finish any chores and errands, then spend the afternoon visiting my mom at the nursing home again, have dinner with her, and I would usually get back around 7 p.m., followed by a few hours of TV while doing some last-minute laundry and then go to bed.

She asked me how often I took vacations.

My answer surprised me because I had never considered it before, but over the past five (or so) years, I have taken no vacations. All of my vacation and personal time accrued at work was either used up for doctor and hospital visits with my mom or because I was sick myself.

She asked me about hobbies and what I do for fun.

I said I liked to go fishing for an hour or so when time permits, but other than that, I really didn’t have anything else in my life. To be honest, this was a pretty humbling and embarrassing admission.

She asked about my eating and exercise habits.

My answer again surprised me: I did literally zero exercise, and I mainly ate based on cravings and convenience, which generally included high amounts of sugar and fat. Not to mention, I drink coffee all day at work and at home.

She was polite in her delivery, but her message was stern as she explained the problem and resolution.

Her assessment of the collapse I experienced had less to do with that one incident and more to do with a lifestyle that was more than my current mental and physical capacities could handle.

Through years of neglect, she continued, my overall mental and physical health had declined. Those faculties needed to be built back up, which would require willpower on my part and time so nature could run its course to heal what was broken.

She started listing all my problems, which included being overweight, having high blood pressure and terrible blood work, and feeling stressed out and tired all the time.

I needed to start a daily regimen that included eating nutritiously and doing daily exercise. That did not surprise me.

What surprised me was when she said I needed to fit more personal time for hobbies and activities into my week and more quiet time and rest into my days because both help our minds and bodies heal in different but essential ways.

I nodded in agreement, and for the first few days, I did precisely that, but then the train flew off the tracks.

Life happened, as it has a tendency to do, and I regressed back to my prior unhealthy ways. Instead of following my doctor’s advice, my routine started to center again around work, my mom, and doing chores.

I felt tired, drained, and unhealthy all the time, but I stubbornly pushed myself through each day, somehow thinking (or maybe just wishing) that tomorrow would be better.

Fast-forward about a year and a half, and COVID hit, and like everyone else, it added stress to my already overstressed life.

My mind and body didn’t respond well.

That’s when I started to have anxiety issues, and the associated panic attacks were so severe they landed me in the hospital several times over the next few months. These attacks became so repetitive that I started to have trouble leaving my home to go to work. Eventually, I even had difficulties going to the grocery store.

I couldn’t believe I was so scared of the attacks that I couldn’t even leave home to get groceries.

This was a low point for me. In fact, the lowest.

During this time, my doctor told me point-blank that I needed to either get a handle on my lifestyle or start taking some medications for all this.

As a related backstory, she knew I didn’t want to take medication. I’ve had depression most of my adult life (which, of course, added to all this) and, at one point, took medication to get it under control. I worked for a few years on managing that and was so happy when I was able to stop taking medication for it that I vowed I’d never take meds again (or at least it was going to be as a last resort).

She stressed to me again how this was probably all fixable with some time and drastic lifestyle changes. I needed to stop doing so much each day, get more downtime, learn to be mindful of what my mind and body needed, and then be sure to provide those things so I could start to recover and get my health back.

So I started to prioritize my health and wellness.

First, I slowed down and started working fewer hours while focusing on maintaining productivity. I mostly accomplished this by not micromanaging people as much as I used to and spending less time on distractions like socializing by the water cooler.

I started to prioritize my health by eating clean foods and exercising daily.

I became a student of mindfulness, listening to what my body and mind needed and providing it daily. I tried my best to become a positive thinker, focusing on my own path, and stopped paying attention to others.

My life became more about me, and I was stingy with my time.

I pursued what made me happy, cutting out what didn’t. I reduced the time I spent using social media, reading, and watching the news and instead used that space for quiet time. I learned to use breathing exercises and simple stretching techniques to nurture a positive mindset.

Instead of rushing around multitasking and trying to see how much I could get done, I focused on what needed to be done, ignored the rest, and only did one thing at a time.

I now took breaks in between tasks.

Most importantly, I started with small, realistic lifestyle changes and made only one or two new changes each day moving forward. This approach helped me maintain consistency while also improving and progressing in the following days, weeks, months, and years.

In October 2020, I was more than seventy pounds overweight, I had high blood pressure and poor blood work, and I had trouble leaving my home to get groceries for fear of anxiety-induced panic attacks.

In February 2022, I had lost seventy-five pounds, my blood work was perfect, my blood pressure and anxiety were gone, and leaving home was no longer a problem.

I healed (and then some).

At that time, I sold everything that didn’t fit into my (really nice) backpack. Now, I am slowly traveling Asia full-time as a digital nomad, starting a new career as a freelance writer.

I share this journey with you for three reasons.

First, as the quote at the beginning of the article suggests, if you don’t take care of your mind and body, the collective ‘you’ will eventually break. We are all wonderfully different, so how that plays out will vary, but minor issues left unchecked now can turn into more significant problems that are more difficult to fix later on.

Second, if that does happen, don’t freak out. Just visit your doctor to get the professional help you need. Chances are, you just need to make lifestyle changes to turn things around. Our mind and body have amazing healing capabilities; we just need to get in tune with what they need and provide that daily.

Third, there was a surprising life lesson in all this for me: When you learn to be mindful of providing your mind and body with what they need, you nurture an amazingly rewarding lifestyle.

That’s because the process involves prioritizing what you need and what is important to you and choosing not to be concerned with everything else because they are distractions. This provides ample room for rest, quiet time, and everything else that replenishes and nourishes essential elements in your life instead of depleting and depriving you of them.

What remains is a life filled with only the things you value and need, which, I must say, is pretty awesome.

So don’t wait until things build up and hit you like a ton of bricks at once.

Be mindful and pay attention to the signs that you are not feeling well along your way, mentally or physically, and then slow down to address those issues before moving on.

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“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” ~Brené Brown

I was walking to my office one day when one of my colleagues gave me a compliment about what I was wearing. I was a little surprised and, without thinking, said something disparaging about my dress and darted off into my office.

As I sat down, I noticed an intense wave of discomfort all over my body, and dark churning thoughts started attacking me.

What is wrong with me? I asked myself. Why did I say such a stupid thing? Why couldn’t I just be normal and say thank you, take the compliment, and move on? Why am I always so awkward? 

As I sat by my desk, I felt like I just wanted to shrivel up and disappear. If the ground had opened up for me right there, I would have willingly jumped into it.

The reply I had given my colleague started to replay in my mind, each time bringing fresh waves of nausea in my stomach and icy chills running down my back.

What was happening to me, and why was such a seemingly innocent event feeling so uncomfortable, so painful even?

When I started to learn about emotions and the role they play in our lives, I noticed a standout feeling that seemed to be quieter, subtler, more invisible than other emotions, but that had possibly the most powerful force of them all. It felt like this emotion’s impact, and how it affected my life and that of many others, was stronger than gravity.

That feeling was shame.

When I talk to people about shame now, many people don’t even recognize they feel it. That’s why I consider it an invisible emotion. It exerts a powerful force in our lives, affecting how we behave and what we think of ourselves, and it leads many of us to get lost in loops of self-blame, punishment, and vicious, nasty, self-hating thoughts. 

When we don’t recognize that we are feeling shame, not only does it erode our self-confidence, but it’s very hard to do anything about it. It’s hard for us to release ourselves from that vicious voice of an inner critic.

Shame was what I was feeling in the office that day. Shame that I hadn’t been able to make an effortlessly charming reply to my colleague. Shame that I might have sounded stupid. Shame that I was getting it wrong socially, again.

When I learned about shame, I realized how natural it was that it arose in a situation like this. How so many people feel shame in social situations—in different ways than perhaps me, but shame around other human beings nonetheless.

Shame isn’t a useless emotion whose job is solely to torment us; it actually has a positive purpose. Shame can be an incredible guide and ally for us when we learn how it operates and why it shows up in our lives, then learn how to work it.

The first barrier that we face in working with shame is that most of us are carrying too much of it.

We have accumulated shame throughout our lives—shame that has perhaps been passed on to us by our families; shame that people have thrown at us because they couldn’t deal with their own; and the continuous drip that many of us experienced of being shamed as children, as our parents and caregivers might have used it as an easy and effective way to get us to do what they needed.

There are myriad ways we accumulate shame, but we know that we have too much when we have this belief that we just aren’t good enough as human beings.

When we accumulate too much shame but don’t know how to release it, it stays hidden within us, growing as we hide more of ourselves, judge more of ourselves, and continue to believe in the wrongness of who we are.

We don’t ‘let shame out’ because shame is perhaps one of the most socially unacceptable emotions. If you are talking to friends and someone says, “Oh, I feel so guilty I missed that text you sent,” it would most likely be considered okay.

But if you said, “I feel so ashamed of myself that I missed your text,” it would likely make the conversation awkward.

People don’t talk about shame because that in itself can feel inherently shameful. It can activate other people’s shame, and it can add to our own expanse of shame when not properly handled. 

There were many areas of my life where shame showed up. In my relationship, how I responded to my kids. I even started to notice intense shame when a childhood back injury would flare up, and I wouldn’t be able to walk properly. I would start feeling shame for not being mobile, like I needed to apologize for my injury.

When I started learning about emotions, I realized how much I needed to unravel the shame I was carrying. So I made it my mission to learn and share everything I could so that I could start to live a life where I felt proud and free of who I was—not trying to make myself smaller or more acceptable, but brazenly free and confident instead. Here are some ideas to support you on your journey to healing and releasing shame.

The Purpose of Shame

Shame is a natural emotion that has a purpose, like all emotions. Shame’s job is to help us stay connected to our group by adhering to the group’s social rules, to keep us safe by being connected, and to ensure we stay in line with both the group and our own values and needs.

For example, if we were told as children that we should be quiet, and at a family gathering we were very loud, shame might have appeared to remind us that our parents would be unhappy with us, so the shame would come to try to slow us down and not risk our connection.

It makes sense for us to have these shame activations when we are children because our safety and survival relies on us staying in connection with our caregivers. But all too often we carry this shame from childhood into our adult life, where it inhibits us from thriving.

Or as an adult, we’re going on holiday with a friend, and they suggest a much more expensive hotel than we’d normally pick. We start to feel uncomfortable and notice shame has arisen, and when we explore it, we see that shame is trying to remind us of our values of not spending our money in ways we don’t feel good about.

This is where shame is trying to be our guide, our ally, so that we can retain both connection with our group and our ability to be authentic to our own needs and values.

Of course, these shame activations don’t feel good, but when we learn why shame exists, it can support us to work with this emotion so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming.

Shame Often Binds with Other Emotions

Do you notice that when you feel certain emotions like fear or anger or grief, shame can appear as well? Like I feel bad for feeling how I am. That I shouldn’t be feeling angry, sad, lonely, fearful, etc.?

This is because shame often binds with emotions that we might not have been allowed to feel as children, or we would get into trouble for. We might have been told off for feeling angry and shamed for doing so. So shame comes up to try and reduce the amount of anger we feel so we don’t get into trouble. And that pattern stays on into adulthood if we don’t recognize it and start to dismantle this shame bind.

For me, I had a strong shame bind with fear. I would often be made fun of for always being a “scaredy cat” by my friends as a child, or told not to feel fear by the adults around me—that I was being silly.

Shame identified fear as an emotion that caused problems in my relationships, so it would appear when fear came up to try and slow the fear down so I wouldn’t show it to other people, thereby protecting my relationships.

How to Melt the Shame You Are Carrying

Recognize it’s shame and not a factual report of all of your wrongdoings.

For me, the first step in working with shame is recognizing that I am feeling shame, and that I am not getting a long, factual report of all the things I am doing wrong in my life.

Shame is a lens that distorts our vision of ourselves. We don’t see who we really are when shame is activated within us.

Ask yourself: What does shame feel like for me?

Shame can feel like:

• Being uncomfortable in your body.
• Feeling shy and pulling away.
• Having a flushed face.
• Feeling tightness in your throat or nauseous.
• Struggling to breathe.
• Needing to look away; having trouble keeping eye contact.
• Feeling like the bottom is falling out from underneath you.
• Freezing, shutting down.
• Being lost for words.

What does shame feel like for you? What happens to your body when shame activates?

The next step for me is noticing what I do when I feel shame. How do I respond?

Potential reactions to shame include:

• Putting yourself down.
• Attacking or blaming others—trying to throw the shame onto someone else.
• Suddenly forgetting what you are going to say.
• Going blank or freezing.
• Denying or avoiding.
• Using an activity to numb out.
• Withdrawing and pulling away or pulling in.
• Wanting to disappear, vanish.

For me, putting myself down and withdrawing from people are my two biggest reactions.

When we know what it feels like for us, it’s easier to spot when it arises. And when we can acknowledge the shame we are experiencing, and not judge ourselves for having this very natural and normal human emotion, it can help us move out of the shame activation more quickly.

Use gentle movement to move out of shame’s freeze qualities and connect to your body.

When we experience shame, we often have this urge to shrink or disappear. And this comes with some rigid freezing sensations in the body. We can feel stuck in our bodies and find it hard to move.

To support ourselves with this freezing, rigid state, we can offer ourselves some gentle, slow movement. Making sure we are staying connected to our breathing, and that we are indeed breathing, we can rock, sway, hug ourselves, move our hands, wrists, and arms—whatever feels both possible and positive in the moment.

It can also feel very supporting to give ourselves some comforting physical touch—stroking our face and arms, putting a hand on our heart and giving ourselves a gentle rub, rubbing our arms and giving ourselves a hug, wrapping ourselves up in cozy scarves or blankets, offering gentle, kind, and loving physical support.

Connect to your breath.

Keeping in touch with our breath is vital. When we are emotionally overwhelmed, we can either hold our breath or have very shallow breathing, so taking some short inhales and long exhales can start our breathing again and also give us a sense of calm. (The long exhales activate the ‘rest and digest’ part of our nervous system.)

Offer empathy, validation, and connection.

All emotions yearn for empathy and validation. Emotions want to be acknowledged, to be seen, to be felt and heard. When we ignore our emotions, or judge ourselves for having them, we inhibit their ability to integrate and release from our bodies.

Giving ourselves empathy in acknowledging our experience can be so soothing in the midst of a shame activation.

“It’s so hard to feel all of the uncomfortableness of shame.”

“It was so painful to feel so much shame around this experience. It makes so much sense though that I felt that.”

“Shame isn’t easy for anyone to feel! I am going to stay and support myself while I move through this emotion.”

Remember that curiosity is an antidote to shame.

Curiosity is a very powerful tool to start melting shame. Curiosity can help us process and support any emotion, but it really supports us in working with shame.

It feels pleasurable to be curious, so we can ask questions like: Might anyone else feels like this? What is happening to me? In my body? In my thoughts? How are my past experiences affecting how I am feeling now?

It breaks some of the rigidity that shame creates with “always” and “never” statements: I am always getting this wrong. I never make any progress. I’m always a terrible person.

When we start being curious and looking for new ideas, new ways of seeing, it can break us out of the tunnel vision, fixation part of shame. And when our vision expands, it feels better for our whole physiology.

When we learn how to reduce the amount of shame we are carrying, as well as learn the message it’s trying to deliver, shame can be a powerful ally. It can show us where we are straying away from our authenticity and our own boundaries. It can remind us of what is important to us, and how we can stay in safe connection with each other.

Learning the messages our emotions are trying to deliver is one of the most empowering journeys we can take toward self-healing, confidence, and authenticity.

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“You may not be able to control every situation and its outcome, but you can control how you deal with it.” ~Unknown

Life is often crazy and rushed. Sometimes it’s difficult to feel a sense of control. It can be utterly chaotic and leave us feeling lost.

This is exactly where I was two years ago. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I felt hopeless, directionless, and completely lost pretty much every day.

I didn’t feel like I had a grip on anything in my life, including my thoughts, emotions, and actions.

I had just returned from the local doctor, a prescription of antidepressants in hand and the first pill on its way down my throat, when something dawned on me.

I realized that this was not the answer. I realized that thinking a drug would fix all of my issues was not only a false fantasy, but it was also extremely ironic. Because by taking them, I was actively choosing to worsen the cause of my issues.

By taking the drug, I’d be sacrificing even more of my freedom and control. I’d essentially be putting the fate of my future into the hands of a daily dose of pills.

I am not saying antidepressants are bad, nor am I suggesting that anyone should stop taking them, as they can be beneficial to many people’s mental health. They were simply something I realized I could avoid taking by instead addressing my problem in an alternative way.

I believe it was at this very moment that everything changed for me. It was then that I realized that I was the cause of my problems, and only I could be the solution, so the journey began.

Since then, I’ve been the happiest I have ever been, with a newfound sense of control and an unshakable feeling of self-belief.

These are the four ways I managed to obtain this sense of control. I hope these steps can help you do the same.

1. Taking Responsibility

Taking responsibility is one of the most important things a person can do, but it might not be what you think. What was the first thing that came to mind when thinking about taking responsibility? Is it owning up to your negative behavior? Is it admitting when you’ve done wrong?

I’d like to instead focus instead on the things that are not your fault.

This might leave you confused at first. You might be wondering why anyone would take responsibility for things they haven’t caused.

Just because something isn’t directly your fault, it doesn’t mean you can’t take responsibility for it. In my case, I was blaming my childhood and upbringing for the way I felt. I thought that because certain things had happened to me, and they were not my fault, I was somehow entitled to stew in my feelings and react negatively to them.

But who does this type of mentality benefit? It certainly didn’t benefit me. In order to get better, I had to take responsibility for the way I was. Only then could any meaningful change occur.

I’m not saying you should blame yourself. This actually eliminates blame altogether, because it doesn’t matter who’s at fault. If you’re the one suffering the consequences, you’re also the one who needs to take responsibility for them.

The moment something negative has happened, it is done; it can’t be changed. Thus, the only thing left for you to do is deal with the consequences the best you can. Refuse to be left bitter and resentful and, instead, learn and grow.

The next time something negative happens in your life, ask yourself, “Am I dealing with this in the best possible way?”

2. Doing Hard Things

The moment I started doing hard things, my life started to change for the better.

Life is difficult, and as far as I’m aware, it’s always going to be. Have you ever met or heard of someone who has been through some extremely tough times throughout their life? These people are always very mentally strong, and less affected by tough times.

The bad news is we can’t fake these sorts of tough times, nor can we recreate them. But we can raise our standard of difficulty in other ways. I mean, people have literally built a building and put a bunch of heavy metal things in it for others to come to pay and lift them.

I’m not saying you have to go to the gym; I’m simply saying that to become less affected by life’s inevitable attacks, we can actively increase our tolerance for discomfort so that when they do come, we are much less affected.

This gives us control, as we can’t prevent life from hurting us, but we can actively choose to reduce the pain it causes.

Some examples of hard things I started to do included running, taking cold showers and ice baths, and following a healthier diet.

Start implementing daily hard things into your routine, and you’ll notice the difference.

3. All Wins Are The Same 

When pursuing a goal, it’s very easy to get caught up thinking about achieving it, but this only results in an overwhelming sense of distance between you and the goal. You’d be much better off focusing smaller. Instead of comparing who you are now with your ideal self, focus on the very next thing that will move you closer to the person you want to be.

Doing this not only removes that feeling of distance, but it will also constantly make you feel like a winner. And trust me, all wins are the same, so you might as well celebrate them all.

What do I mean by all wins are the same?

There is a concept I have recently been interested in, which is the hedonic treadmill.

According to Wikipedia, “The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.”

This means we get used to things very quickly. So let’s say your goal is to lose fifty pounds. Losing the first pound is the same as losing the fiftieth.

Equally, it’s the same if your goal is to reach a million subscribers or to earn your first one million pounds (or dollars).

To lose fifty pounds, you must have already lost forty-nine. To reach one million subscribers or your first one million pounds/dollars, you must at some point be at the number 999,999.

I’m not underestimating these achievements—not at all. And I’m also not saying you shouldn’t have big goals.

But I’m saying the value that comes from them only comes from the context that is applied to them. People fail to understand that the value attached to the goal was given by a past version of themselves, whereas a completely different version has experienced them, so essentially, the value has gone.

The version of you that sets the target and the version of you that reaches it are used to two completely different standards. By being able to reach your goal, you have subsequently removed all value from it.

The difference between 999,999 and 1 million is 0.0001%, yet quite literally no one celebrates reaching the former.

This is the reason why people feel so empty when they finally reach their goals.

To avoid this, and to constantly feel like a winner, you should focus on the very next step and celebrate every win.

4. Discipline = Freedom 

You’ve probably heard of discipline and all of its benefits many times before, as it is a crucial thing to adopt if you want to be successful at anything in life. However, I’m going to be talking about a positive aspect of discipline that no one knows or talks about.

And that’s the sense of freedom that comes with it.

There is an obvious way that discipline leads to freedom: By avoiding procrastination and getting tasks done immediately, we end up having more time.

But there is a more profound sense of freedom that discipline gives us.

As I have already mentioned, we’ll all inevitably experience feelings of discomfort in life, often from things completely out of our control.

Now, let’s say you let these feelings stop you from doing what you know you should do. You’re letting external circumstances dictate how and where your life goes.

Having the discipline to continue doing what needs to be done regardless of external situations or the feelings that might ensue will give you the most profound sense of freedom.

Without discipline in these situations, you’re essentially losing all sense of control.

One of the biggest things I felt when I started to build discipline, although I didn’t know it at the time, was a wave of freedom I had never felt before.

Externally, everything in my life was exactly the same—nothing on the outside had changed. Yet everything on the inside had. I felt free. Being in control of your life means everything suddenly no longer feels permanent and you no longer feel helpless.

As mentioned above, doing hard things is a great way to build discipline, as you’ll most likely feel like doing these the least. But discipline can also be built by the smaller and more mundane things, like waking up earlier or refusing to snooze, starting a daily meditation practice, or replacing endless scrolling with learning a language.

These are some of the small things I used to build more discipline. Yours could look completely different. The trick is to find something productive that’s a challenge to be persistent with—then a sense of control and a feeling of freedom will follow.

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“You are not your feelings. You just experience them. Anger, sadness, hate, depression, fear. This is the rain you walk in. But you don’t become the rain. You know the rain will pass. You walk on. And you remember the soft glow of the sun that will come again.” ~Matt Haig

I have been anxious for as long as I can remember.

All of my earliest memories are ones where I was worrying or fearful for one reason or another.

Thinking back, the first memory I have that is akin to that of an actual anxiety disorder, meaning that the anxiety was interfering with my day-to-day life, was when I was in the first grade and I simply refused to use the computers in the computer lab at school because I was scared of breaking them. It wasn’t just a fear of breaking it; it was the full-blown rabbit hole that my thoughts took me down because of it.

I worried that if I used the computer, then it would break, then the teacher would yell at me, then I would get suspended, then I would get in trouble with my parents, then they would get into a fight, and then they would break up, and then it would be my fault. And that’s not even the end of the cycle! There were other twists and turns that led to other irrational potential consequences as well.

I never thought to talk to anybody about troubling thoughts that I was having because I assumed it was normal, that all of my classmates felt the same.

I have always been a quiet and reserved person. The people around me never let me forget about it either. Even in high school classes, the attention would get focused on me and why I wasn’t talking and laughing with the rest of the kids during group work. Class presentations? Forget about it.

I always took the failing grade on those assignments.

I finally saw a psychiatrist when I was sixteen because I did eventually open up to my mother about my issues. There have been numerous medication changes over the years, as sometimes I would get nasty side effects from them, or they just plain didn’t work.

To be honest, I have never been entirely sure that they have been effective at all. When I voiced this concern to my psychiatrist, she told me flat out that given my history, trauma, and personality, my anxiety was most likely going to be a lifelong condition. I instantly went into denial mode.

However, she did set me up with a therapist who worked in the outpatient clinic whom I met with several times. Because it was only a short-term thing, we didn’t get to delve deep into my issues, but he gave me tools that actually helped. Even though I have struggled to implement them off and on over the years, I do believe they hold weight.

All of the brief and very infrequent periods of relative calmness in my life were achieved from remembering these two things.

The only way to beat anxiety is to accept it and face it. If there was one thing that the therapist made sure to cement in my mind, it was to never run away from it. In fact, he encouraged me to invite it on purpose. At the time I was too immature to understand it. It sounded like a terrible idea. Why would I want to purposely feel like that?

If you do wind up avoiding the things or situations that trigger your anxiety, it will grow over time and become even harder to contain.

I remember leaving that appointment feeling like there was some type of parasite living inside my mind. A parasite that feeds on fear, and if I wasn’t careful it would grow into this giant monster that would swallow me whole!

Flash-forward a few years to when I have a little bit more life experience, some jobs under my belt, some education to complete, a.k.a. real chances to face my anxiety… and I have come to understand what he was talking about.

Today, I have fully accepted that I am an anxious person. I fully accept that I will always be a little reserved and cautious and live with a tendency to overthink things.

For example, just last week at work my manager took a phone call and I immediately thought it was about me. My mind led me down that all too familiar rabbit hole. Instantly, the thoughts began flooding my mind.

It went like this: They have finalized the decision. I am a horrible employee and am about to get fired. I will no longer have an income, and I will lose my apartment. Next, my girlfriend will break up with me, and after that I will die alone on the street, and no one will ever remember me.

Of course there were other scenarios and weird consequences that my mind conjured up. I liken the experience to some twisted “choose your own adventure story.”

In reality, the phone call didn’t even have anything to do with me, and the rest of my day just went on as normal. I didn’t die. The world didn’t explode. I didn’t lose my mind. And I didn’t get screamed at.

It was just the anxiety talking, and I accept that.

I now know that it can’t hurt me, and it doesn’t make me a bad person. I know that I can be successful in whatever endeavors I embark on in life. I will just have to work a little harder than some people to overcome my own worst enemy… my mind.

Just like the therapist had explained all those years ago, accepting my anxiety has weirdly taken away its power. It no longer has the grip on me that it once had. It is what it is. It is never EVER going away, so why fight it? I have already hit rock bottom several times thanks to my anxiety, and did it kill me? No, I survived and got back up and kept pushing.

The best mindset that I have adopted for myself is that my thoughts simply do not define me. Plain and simple. I know that I am going to be anxious whether I DO, and I know that I will be anxious whether I DON’T, so, what the hell, I might as well DO.

And that right there is the key! Despite that terrible, gut-wrenching sense of terror and unease, you still have control. You have the power to act in opposition to how you feel.

It’s easier said than done, believe me. But whatever it is that you are scared of facing, don’t put it off any longer. Just do it. It’s the only way that you will eventually realize that in the end, everything will be okay.

Sure, you might still be anxious, but it will slowly and surely lose its grip on you.

I forget where I read it, but I saw a quote where somebody said that anxiety is the disease of missed opportunity, and I have never related to anything more in my life.

I have missed out on countless opportunities in life, some potential life-long memories that I will forever regret missing out on.

Life is short. It is too beautiful to shy away from. I don’t want to miss any more. From here on out, I am choosing to fight my anxiety by welcoming it with open arms.

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“The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode, but the true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows. The beauty of a woman grows with the passing years.” ~Audrey Hepburn

I was home for the summer on break from graduate school. As I walked into my childhood room, suitcase and duffle in hand, I noticed a small brown box on my bed. I placed my bags on the floor.

The box had a few simple items in it and was labeled “Mudder.” The nickname we called my grandmother.

Mudder had recently passed away after several years at a nursing home at the age of ninety-four. I went to her very small, sweet funeral, thankful to have had a grandmother I truly loved and knew had loved me.

Just before I left school, Dad and Uncle Zeke had gone through her estate, sorted things between them, and handled all of the things children are left to handle during those times. We each had a small sum of money left to us. Growing up in The Great Depression and living through World War II, Mudder had learned to make do with a modest lifestyle.

But no one had mentioned the brown box I now found on my bed. I realized it had been designated to me.

It contained two cardigans, a jewelry box, and a five-year journal from when she was in her twenties. What a treasure!

Growing up, to me, Mudder was just my grandmother. And sometimes when I was feeling wise, she was my dad’s mom.

I always knew my black hair came from her. I’d also inherited her sense of humor, love of reading, and my first name, Katherine. She was born just one day ahead of me, with some years scattered between us, on Valentine’s Day, which I always thought was very cool.

I knew she played the organ for her church and taught me how to play Moon River and Always. And every time we’d travel to see her in Atlanta, Georgia, we knew we’d have the same breakfast of bologna, scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and cut fruit.

I also knew she had a sharp tongue that each family member took a turn with. She wore orthopedic shoes, did crossword puzzles in a breeze, walked in her neighborhood every day, and would scratch my back for over an hour at a time.

I’d occasionally ask her questions about her life and what it was like growing up in the 1930s. She’d fill me in on our Irish heritage, what happened to each of her nine siblings, and what she did on her recent trip to visit her cousins in Florida. I’d ask her to tell me about the stars since I knew she’d had an interest from a long time ago.

But that was mostly it. She was my grandmother. I loved her and she loved me.

Once her diary was entrusted to me, however, I realized the obvious truth I’d overlooked for my whole life with her.

My grandmother had also been a young woman.

An engaged woman.

A celestial navigator for the U.S. Navy in the 1940s.

In this precious diary that was bestowed to me, I had five years of her life written in her own voice, by her own hand.

The journal was set up as five years per page. On one single calendar day, there would be five sections to write the date of each year and three lines designated per year. The entries were quite short but were filled with life.

On one single page, I could see five years of her history.

Beginning with her first day at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas, the day she met my grandfather, the day he proposed, and the day she yelled at him for being out all night drinking and womanizing while she cared for two small boys at their home.

I learned how nervous and excited she was to start her new career. How things were laid out at the naval base, and what her living arrangements were. I began to read her history through the eyes of a bright, hopeful, and eventually heartbroken woman.

I didn’t know much about my grandfather. He passed of a stroke before I was born. I knew he was funny and charming, liked sports, and fished on Sundays. He also loved the bottle and ran around on my grandmother.

They ultimately divorced. No one talked about it much. It was a long time ago, after all. Plus, I’m not sure how much was known. It was all a bit mysterious and quiet.

In year one of her journal, I read about some friends she made and what a good time it was on the base. Reading the anticipation and wide-eyed joy that my grandmother, Katherine Valentine, felt during her first week at Corpus Christi made me smile and giggle for her. “Oh Mudder, look at you. Aren’t you brave?!”

Perhaps she’s where I got my sense of adventure too? I’d never considered that.

It was intriguing to read about the day she met Norm, my grandfather. She was smitten. This was no longer a pieced-together story told to me by surviving family members. This was happening on the page.

A clear picture of a woman in her twenties, whose eyes sparkled and heart was full. Mudder had fallen in love.

This was my grandmother. A beautiful, audacious, romantic woman.

This youthful girl, full of life and joy, went on dates to the movies with her partner, laughed at his jokes, introduced him to her friends, and accepted a proposal from this sunny man she believed would be the love of her life.

And my Mudder, the brilliant young navigator, became a wife. Then a mother to Doug, then Richard. She loved them so.

But like so many journals of mothers with small children, the entries became far less frequent. She had her hands full caring for two little boys and juggling the household. Thankfully, the entries didn’t completely stop there. She did wind up reporting on holidays, birthdays, and the time Norm was drunk in front of the kids and was picked up by “her” again.

This was not my ninety-four-year-old grandmother who sat beside me and read with large-lensed glasses. This was a luminous woman, with a broken heart, and two darling, sunny boys, who did in fact turn out to be the loves of her life.

As I read her diary, I felt deeply connected to her. She’d lived so much life before I came along on the scene.

How silly I was to think of Katherine Valentine simply as my grandma. Yes, she was Mudder, my grandmother who I adored. But she was also a woman, full of thoughts, feelings, dreams, disappointments, accomplishments, and memories.

She was still that young, courageous girl, no matter her age or circumstances.

Mudder and Katherine were always the same person. And I never knew it.

How lucky and honored I’ve been to be the caretaker of her journal. I have a piece of her story and heart on these pages. What a gift that I’ve gotten to know her as a vibrant woman, not just as my devoted grandmother.

When I think of my experience reading her diary and having her world open up to me even just a sliver, I’m reminded to take that curiosity into all of my encounters with others. It’s easy to see other people as two-dimensional, part of a transaction, or just as passersby.

But every person we come across has their own sweet and broken story of life. We all have desires, moments of happiness, regret, and sadness. But we can miss recognizing that in each other if we aren’t looking outward. We just have to slow down and listen, be open, and acknowledge how dynamic we all are.

We may never know much of anything about the lives of people that we intersect with. But in the few seconds we interact or walk past each other, we owe a respect to one another. As we carry our own experiences and longings, so do others.

They have their own Katherine Valentine story as well.

**Image generated by AI

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